Giveaways, takeaways and what's important for the Leafs in Round 1

If us hockey analysts who regularly lean on stats felt we could trust giveaway and takeaway numbers, we’d talk about them a lot more. In theory, they would tell a clear story about which players take more chances with the puck, and which are more conservative. They’d also paint a nice picture of who helps your team get the puck back, and who gives it to the bad guys.

In small samples though, we just can’t trust the data. Even in larger ones we need to take the numbers with a full shaker of salt. Giveaways and takeaways are subjective moments in a hockey game, but to perfectly capture their frequency would require the same standard being enforced from rink to rink. When you have two different people tracking a game — let alone 32 different people doing it around the league — your odds of being consistent throughout are pretty slim.

Some buildings are a little friendlier to their home team than the visitors, and the numbers get a little messy. (In my digging on this, San Jose has graded out marvellously well in giveaways/takeaways despite being not very good the past few seasons, which has me a little skeptical.)

But more generally I do think there are things we can learn about guys through these stats. For example, each team could be compared against itself reasonably well, given they’ve been in the same environments. And players who play a lot should have a big enough sample for us to learn something about their games.

The last note before we look at some tables: defencemen do not have a chance to look good here. They don’t forecheck the opposition very often, but they’re constantly forechecked. The best thing to do is focus on the forwards, and to take a glance at the history of some teams. Here are the top-20 names in giveaways (bad) versus takeaways (good) plus-minus:

Seattle also seems to get a boost in these stats, but wow, shout-out Alex Wennberg for being responsible with the puck. Just outside the top-20 are a couple guys on Canadian teams (Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and David Kampf), as well as Selke winner Aleksander Barkov. Some skeptical Leafs fans may raise their eyebrows at seeing ol’ Willy Nylander on here, though they shouldn’t be surprised.

Notable for me: Carolina has two defencemen on the list, which could certainly be some hometown bias, but it’s also two guys who we know are absurdly good D-men (Jaccob Slavin and Brett Pesce), so some love to them for being in this group. Along with Nylander, Ryan O’Reilly shows up for the Leafs, while the Lightning have Brandon Hagel and Nick Paul on the board.

Now, how about the other way: the guys who give it away and don’t win it back? This top number is pretty staggering:

Here we naturally see a few more D-men, but it is fascinating that Artemi Panarin and David Pastrnak are this high up the list. Some of these players are the product of tougher scenarios (Morgan Rielly plays big minutes against top competition, as do guys like Aaron Ekblad, Dougie Hamilton, Drew Doughty, etc.), but I don’t think it’s a crazy coincidence that guys we think of as elite passers turn the puck over a lot. (It’s maybe more noteworthy they rarely get it back, though seeing Brad Marchand on the list does make me wonder about the Bruins' stat-keeper.)

If you sort the NHL’s “turnovers” category at the end of each season, it’s a veritable who’s who of great passers. That’s because to create those insta-goals, you have to try to thread some needles, and the reward of getting them through (a goal) is generally greater than the risk of turning it over in those spots.

For the Leafs, their top turnover guy is Mitch Marner. He’s got the seventh-most in the whole NHL, but he’s surrounded on that list by names like Leon Draisaitl, Erik Karlsson, Jack Hughes and Nikita Kucherov. Marner also wins the puck back more than anyone in the league. Here’s a look at the Leafs' top guys in turnover to giveaway ratio:

John Tavares is worst among Leafs forwards at minus-10, which I think checks out. He takes some risks and isn’t a dominant forechecker (though he does capitalize when his linemates forecheck well).

One thing that does interest me is that on a team level, recent Cup champions have graded out extremely well here, while the team I talk about each day — the Leafs — have not.

The 2022 Avalanche were second-best in the NHL in turnover-to-giveaway ratio (behind Tampa Bay). In 2021 Tampa was just 10^th, but were third in 2020, and the 2019 champion Blues were second-best in the league behind the excellent Golden Knights. 

This year’s top-3 are Seattle, Vegas, and Colorado, for those interested. For curious Leafs fans looking ahead to their first-round opponent, here's how Tampa Bay and Toronto have ranked league-wide in turnover-to-giveaway ratio the past five years. You can understand why the Leafs might have been interested in some more conservative players at the deadline:

Noel Acciari, in particular, has graded positively over this season, winning back more pucks than he’s given away.

These are weird stats, I know. Great players turn the puck over a lot, and D-men don’t cause as many turnovers, so there’s a lot to consider when staring at the raw numbers.

But I do think it helps us better understand players like Panarin and Kucherov, who take risks and wait for their teammates to win the puck back. I do think it helps us appreciate guys like Yanni Gourde and Joel Eriksson Ek and Mark Stone, who excel at getting the puck back for their team to play with. And if you’re heading into the post-season and see the success teams who’ve been on the right side of this ledger have had, it can be a reminder for you too.

You want to take some chances and create offence, but you can’t score if you don’t have the puck. Getting it and not giving it back is a big part of that battle.

All stats collected by Sportsnet Stats as of April 5